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My computer is literally and metaphorically falling apart. GPU on other hand works flawlessly. It's 4850. No trouble whatsoever. And I didn't have problems with 7600gt before.

ATI/AMD has stopped supporting your card for 3 years now I think. I remember a friend facing problems with his 4870x2 crossfire set up and finding out there were no new drivers for the card at the time.

So good thing the card still works for you, since you are basically on your own now!

Originally Posted by Grizzly

We are talking about the exact same thing here. Ati/AMD cards are really good quality, and so are their drivers, these days.

out of curiosity, do the latest AMD drivers support hardware accelerated HD video? (known as DXVA) cause they didn't last time I checked. Good for them if they've managed to add that in 5 years after nvidia. ATI were great in 2002, I was their biggest fan, but they fluctuate way too frequently these past few years for my liking.

Unfortunately that's a feature of running Linux and you'll encounter the same with a Nvidia card.

Yeah. I just had the impression that it was a little worse with AMD than Nvidia, but if the data show otherwise I'm not going to argue.

Originally Posted by mashakos

ATI/AMD has stopped supporting your card for 3 years now I think. I remember a friend facing problems with his 4870x2 crossfire set up and finding out there were no new drivers for the card at the time.

So good thing the card still works for you, since you are basically on your own now!

Latest available driver for the Radeon HD 4850 is 13.1. Named after January 2013. I'm willing to bet performance improvements are going to be extremely slim pickings, but that is to be expected with an old card. Nvidia would be no better in that respect.

out of curiosity, do the latest AMD drivers support hardware accelerated HD video? (known as DXVA) cause they didn't last time I checked. Good for them if they've managed to add that in 5 years after nvidia. ATI were great in 2002, I was their biggest fan, but they fluctuate way too frequently these past few years for my liking.

ATI Avivo compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support ATI Avivo is used.

what the hell does avivo have to do with DXVA? DXVA is not a proprietary standard that you can only get with crappy players like Cyberlink DVD, it's pretty much a requirement if you want to run high bitrate H.264 video decently.

EDIT: ATI support existed for DXVA but was pretty patchy. I remembered my 5870 not being able to play my bluray rips with DXVA. Someone put out a workaround (best AMD support out there, users who got tricked into buying amd cards..) but by then I sold the blasted thing:
the issue(s):http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=89215

what the hell does avivo have to do with DXVA? DXVA is not a proprietary standard that you can only get with crappy players like Cyberlink DVD, it's pretty much a requirement if you want to run high bitrate H.264 video decently.

strange how it's mostly ati cards that have bugs though isn't it?
Hey if you're strapped for cash ati is great, otherwise we're talking about overall quality and reliability here.

I dunno, surely if ATI cards are better value, but tend to have a few more driver bugs requiring workarounds, then ATI cards are the enthusiast card, while nVidia cards are for 'noobs' that lack either the knowledge or inclination to bother with that stuff. Alternatively they're both decent enough and there's no much difference.

Originally Posted by mashakos

ATI/AMD has stopped supporting your card for 3 years now I think. I remember a friend facing problems with his 4870x2 crossfire set up and finding out there were no new drivers for the card at the time.

So good thing the card still works for you, since you are basically on your own now!

So AMD stopped updating the drivers 3 years ago, and the OP still runs new games fine? That sounds like massively stable drivers to me. A good thing for sure.

I used nVidia cards for years, then got a 5850 yonks ago and haven't upgraded it until this week. Ended up going ATI again as was best price/performance in my range (7950) and the card worked great straight out of the box, only issue was not having the right power adaptors.

There's so very little in it these days that it makes little difference though.

I also kind off like how the link you posted was a problem with the codecs the man used and not his video cards, as the problem persisted when the man in question switched to Nvidia.

The poster in that thread was able to run his videos just fine on nvidia but could not configure his card to output audio to an HDTV. I myself own a Philips 1080p LCD and know how to deal with this issue. DXVA on ati however was intrinsically broken on the driver level in 2010.

The other wikipedia article you are linking to describes UVD. Unlike you, I've actually tried to make it work with mkv's - rather than have it described to me from wikipedia! - and it was broken. The screen randomly flashing green, blocky artifacts everywhere, it was a mess. Since you can't experience (or haven't made the effort to try it out yourself) it here's a blog post for you:http://zachsaw.blogspot.com/2009/08/...-dxva-for.html

The other wikipedia article you are linking to describes UVD. Unlike you, I've actually tried to make it work with mkv's - rather than have it described to me from wikipedia! - and it was broken. The screen randomly flashing green, blocky artifacts everywhere, it was a mess. Since you can't experience (or haven't made the effort to try it out yourself) it here's a blog post for you:

.

Nulth of all: UVD IS, for all intents and purposes, DXVA.
First of all: four year old blog post.
Second of all: Edit in the blog post saying that it was fixed in an update.
Third of all: I do actually watch mkvs (doctor Who) with my ati card and it's video accelleration, and it works just fine for me.
fourth: What sakkura said.